276 
MADAGASCAR. 
car. Native students have passed with great 
credit through the wards, have mastered the 
mysteries of chemical analysis, and have gone 
forth north and south, east and west, to apply 
the blessings of the healing art to their afflicted 
and suffering fellow-countrymen. Diseases once 
considered as without remedy have yielded to 
scientific treatment, and the horrors of periodic 
visitations of smallpox in its most loathsome form 
have been lessened, and life preserved, by the 
introduction of vaccination and the European 
system of treatment. A large and well attended 
class of women who were to qualify for nurses 
and midwifery cases has been a great success ; 
and even the most dreaded of all native affec¬ 
tions, the leprosy, has been arrested in its earlier 
stages by aid which thorough medical knowledge 
and the resources of higher civilisation supplies. 
There are three well-furnished hospitals at Antan¬ 
anarivo, one founded by the late Queen Ranava- 
lona II., in a portion of one of her own palaces, and 
supported out of her private purse, and several 
dispensaries on the coast and in the distant parts 
of the island. The old system of treatment of 
the sick, which was a mixture of charms and 
incantations, and the use of herbs and simples, 
has quite given way before its more potent and 
scientific rival. 
In conversation with a chief of some intelli- 
